In general, soft seats provide a desirable ride in vehicles which are driven on first class roads and freeways. A soft seat is not desirable however on rough or degraded roads or in off road vehicles because the occupant may bounce excessively on the seat. Accordingly, a well damped seat is desirable on rough roads. In addition, the handling requirements of high performance vehicles such as sports cars also required well damped seats. However, contradictions to these generalizations abound in view of the personal comfort preferences of different seat occupants.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a seat with variable damping, i.e., a soft less damped seat could be provided at one time and a sports car ride with a well damped seat provided at another time. Thus, the damping rate of the seat could be varied to suit the road surface as well as the personal preference of the seat occupant.
It is well known in truck seats to provide a seat frame which is mounted above the vehicle floor by a support linkage having an associated adjustable damping means such as a hydraulic or pneumatic cylinder. The seat cushion or resilient foam or a foam enclosed spring structure is mounted upon the seat frame. When the occupant sits upon the seat, the static occupant load upon the seat compresses the seat frame support linkage and damping means. The seat cushion is also compressed. Vehicle vibrations cause further resilient movement of the seat frame and seat cushion above and below the static vertical position.
The application of the aforedescribed truck seat to passenger cars is not favored because the environment of the passenger car occupant compartment does not accommodate a vehicle seat in which the entire seat including the seat frame and the seat cushion would move up and down relative the vehicle floor.
Accordingly the object, feature and advantage of the present invention resides in the provision of a seat cushion damping means for a passenger car seat in which the seat frame is conventionally mounted relative the vehicle floor and the seat cushion damping means acts between the vehicle body and the resilient seat cushion.